NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Dell Inc.
DELL
is growing its Silicon Valley staff in an effort to increase its influence in the rapidly changing tech industry hub.

The company will soon be expanding its operations in Santa Clara, Calif., after already reaching capacity with 700 employees in its research and development facility that opened in October. Dell, seeking to grow beyond its PC roots, opened the 240,000-square foot center for development of business technology such as storage, networking and cloud computing.

Dell also used the center to consolidate employees from several acquisitions in one area and hired about 200 new workers in the region. It will expand into the building next door this summer and will continue adding hundreds of workers each year through acquisitions and new hires. Dell expects to base about 1,500 employees in the Santa Clara facility within the next several years as it takes over the leases of other companies in the complex.

"We have to expand," Dave Johnson, Dell senior vice president of corporate strategy, said in an interview last week. The Santa Clara facility "has filled up faster than we had even anticipated because we're having a lot of success in hiring the skills we need."

The push in Silicon Valley comes as Dell, the world's third-largest PC maker by sales behind Hewlett-Packard Co.
HPQ, -0.33%
and Lenovo Group Ltd. (LNVGY, 0992.HK), faces the risk of a softening computer market. In addition, up-and-coming technology companies like Facebook Inc. threaten to overshadow its influence. The company, based in Round Rock, Texas, hasn't traditionally been viewed as a technology innovator, but it's hoping to change that with its new center.

The complex is part of Dell's increased focus on high-margin business products, including storage systems, security, services and networking. Since 2009, the company has acquired around a dozen companies--from its $3.9 billion purchase of IT services company Perot Systems Corp. to much smaller companies like SecureWorks and Boomi Inc. that sell software as a service.

Part of its transformation has included seeking out different types of workers than in the past, Johnson said. Dell has been hiring more salespeople with technical expertise, he said, and it also has been adding more product development workers.

He said some of the staff has come from acquisitions, but Dell also builds out the teams of its purchased companies.

"Of all of the acquisitions we did last year, the plan was to have [at least] an 80% increase in their development and sales staffs by the end of the [first] year," Johnson said. "That's a lot of hiring...and they will continue to grow."

There have been concerns Dell would have trouble attracting innovative engineers in Silicon Valley who want to work at hotter companies like Apple Inc.
AAPL, -0.87%
Google Inc.
GOOG, -1.10%
or Facebook, but Johnson said Dell is targeting a different pool of workers, particularly those working in IT infrastructure like networking.

And the company is finding it easier to attract talent as it controls a bigger piece of a particular sector, such as storage, he added. In addition, other tech peers have been more cautious with hiring, with companies such as Cisco Systems Inc.
CSCO, +0.42%
laying off workers last year.

Dell has had some success moving into these new markets, but some hurdles remain. Competitors like H-P and EMC Corp.
EMC, +0.41%
still overshadow the company in terms of enterprise product sales. In addition, some of the new areas Dell is entering--such as cloud computing--already are competitive and bring new rivals like Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN, -0.11%

Johnson acknowledged Dell still has more to do, including making more acquisitions in areas such as services and cloud computing. Dell also likely will look more toward the software sector and make a bigger push for the mobile market, he said. The company has announced several tablets and phones over the past couple years, but all failed to gain significant traction.

It's still uncertain how Dell's mobile strategy will shape up, but Johnson said the company believes the software, security and other offerings surrounding the phone are more important than the device itself. It will have tablets and smartphones but could offer services such as helping companies manage and secure their mobile devices.

"Is it critical to be the innovator of the smartphone? Maybe not," Johnson said. "What I would say is incredibly important is it has to be a part of your solutions. It's going to become a part of everything you do."

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